Communist Party Chief Held in Philippines

By The Associated Press

March 22, 2014

MANILA — Philippine security forces arrested the chairman of the underground Communist Party of the Philippines and his wife on Saturday, the military said, dealing the biggest blow in years to the decades-old rebel group.

The party chairman, Benito Tiamzon, and his wife, Wilma, also a senior party officer, were arrested in Aloguinsan Township in central Cebu Province, said Gen. Emmanuel T. Bautista, the military chief of staff.

The arrests came a week before the party’s armed wing, the New People’s Army, is to commemorate its 45th anniversary.

The couple face charges of crimes against humanity, including multiple murders, General Bautista said in a statement. The statement provided no other details about the arrests. Local news media reports said five other people were also arrested.

General Bautista said the arrests were “another victory for the combined efforts” of the military and the police and called on other members of the Communist Party and the New People’s Army to “lay down their arms, abandon the armed struggle and return to the comfort of their families and join us in bringing peace and development to our nation.”

Ms. Tiamzon, the party’s secretary general, was arrested in the early 1990s but escaped from custody. Many other senior Communist Party leaders have also been killed or captured over the years, including some who the rebels said were consultants in peace negotiations who were supposed to be immune from arrest while talks were continuing.

Talks to end the Marxist insurgency in the Philippines, one of Asia’s longest-running, collapsed in 2011 because of disagreements over releasing several jailed rebel leaders. In a statement from the Dutch city of Utrecht where he lives in exile, Luis Jalandoni, chief negotiator for the rebels, condemned the arrests, saying the Tiamzons carry government safe-conduct passes as “consultants” in the peace talks.

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